Music: Out of the Bar

A dozen years ago Cleveland-born Grace Hoffman, now 34. was working as a cashier and bar checker at a watering hole on Broadway hard by the Metropolitan Opera House. Last week she turned up at the place across the street, this time as Brangäne in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. To cover the 100-odd yards, she had to travel to the musical capitals of Europe and back again.

Mezzo-Soprano Hoffman held on to her Manhattan bar job while she took singing lessons. In 1951 she won a Fulbright scholarship to study opera in Italy, became a member first of the Zurich Stadt-theater, later of the Stuttgart Staatsoper. In her seven years in Europe. Grace has appeared at La Scala, Covent Garden. Florence. Bayreuth. With her 2½-octave range she has sung 20-odd roles, including Carmen. Gluck’s Orpheus, Dora-bella in Mozart’s Cosí fan Tutte, Ulrica in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera, plus mezzo and contralto parts in the Ring cycle.

In her Met debut last week Mezzo Hoffman displayed a veteran’s easy stage presence and a wide-ranging voice that floated purely though somewhat colorlessly in its upper register, darkened richly in its lower one. The haunting warning Einsam wachend in der Nacht in Act II had a texture soft as velvet, but with resonant carrying power. Her characterization in one of opera’s most thankless roles was skillfully subdued, came as a welcome relief from the histrionics with which other Brangänes sometimes worry the Met’s stage. All in all, it was a welcome and memorable first visit by the girl from across the way.